Monday, August 4, 2008

Mark Richt didn't waste time pretending he expected football-related questions at this afternoon's news conference. He addressed the off-field issues, in particular the fight outside an Athens bar last weekend, and didn't mince words. I'll have a full story on this for tomorrow's Telegraph and Ledger-Enquirer, but here's what Richt had to say:

It s certainly been a distraction. There s no way you can say it hasn t been a distraction because it has been. But we have to realize, No. 1, it s not every guy on that team. No. 2, the ones that have misbehaved are paying the price for it. It s not like nothing s going to happen. There has been discipline for it. Anybody who has reached my threshold for behavior have been dismissed or have been suspended and possibly will be dismissed.

"But if a guy has a first-time offense, I don t believe in throwing that guy under the bus to try to stave off the wolves, so to speak. I don t think that s fair to that guy. Dewberry s an example. I don t think I should throw Dewberry off the football team. I ve never had a problem with Darius Dewberry. Dewberry s never been a problem. I know he was very distraught about a teammate being hurt badly, and he was very angry, and he made a bad mistake as he walked home from the hospital. That was very stupid, and that was it. We re not trying to hide the fact that he did it. He s admitting that he did it. He s going to pay a price for it. And hopefully he ll learn a life lesson from it.

"That s what it s all about. Say what you want, we are still in the business of educating young people to learn how to live life and to get their degrees and move forward, and that s my focus, that s my job, that s what I m doing in a very organized and honest way.

"We ve had more issues than I d like to deal with in any given offseason, no doubt, but I do believe and I m not so stubborn that I m not going to be open to other ideas, we will look into other ways of making sure we do a better job but we have multiple sessions on things that need to be done and don t need to be done. And when a guy does step out of line, he does get disciplined. But the first time a young man has a situation, and you throw him out of the house, it s hard to help a guy once he s gone. If a guy gets to a point where he doesn t belong anymore, then he is gone. Once a guy gets to Georgia, they re mine, they re ours. We re gonna love them, we re gonna teach them, we re gonna train him and we re gonna discipline him, just like we would our own children, until they are ready to go off and make it. If a guy gets to a point where he will not comply whatsoever, then he goes. It s not a right. It s a privilege to be at Georgia.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Seth Emerson has been covering the SEC and Georgia (on and off) since 2002. He worked at the Albany Herald from 2002-05, then spent five years at The State in Columbia, S.C., covering South Carolina. He returned to Athens in August of 2010, only to find that David Pollack and David Greene were no longer playing for the Bulldogs. Adjustments were made. Emerson is originally from Silver Spring, Md., and graduated from Maryland in 1998 with a degree in journalism and a minor in getting lost on the way to practically everywhere. Then he spent four years at The Washington Post, covering small colleges, a couple NCAA basketball tournaments, and on one glorious day, was yelled at by Tony Kornheiser. It was probably at The Post that he also learned to write in the third person.These days he lives in Athens with his beloved and somewhat wimpy dog, Archie. Together they fight crime at night in northeast Georgia, except on nights there is no crime, in which case they sit at home, sip on white wine and watch reruns of "Mad Men."